The leader of Israel's Likud party, Binyamin Netanyahu, has maintained a lead in advance of the country's 10 February election that is several points clear of his main rivals, both of whom have been directly involved in the Gaza campaign.

A poll published in the Maariv daily yesterday gave Netanyahu 28 seats in Israel's 120-seat parliament, five more than his closest rival Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party. Ehud Barak, the Labour defence minister, trails in third.

Netanyahu opposes a substantial withdrawal from the West Bank and has said he would not prevent the natural expansion of settlements. Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, has criticised settlements in the past.

Yesterday, Mitchell gave a sober assessment of the obstacles to peace. After two days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on shoring up a shaky ceasefire that ended Israel's 22-day offensive against Gaza, Mitchell said securing the truce and "immediately" addressing the needs of Gaza's 1.5 million population were the US administration's top priorities.

"Then we must move forward," he added, citing Obama's commitment to "aggressively" seek a peace deal.

US-backed talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled last year in discord over Jewish settlement expansion and the future of Jerusalem. Diplomats said reviving them after the war in Gaza would be difficult and take time. "The tragic violence in Gaza and in southern Israel offers a sobering reminder of the very serious and difficult challenges and, unfortunately, the setbacks that will come," Mitchell told reporters after touring a UN warehouse in East Jerusalem .

Meanwhile, Tony Blair, envoy for the Quartet , which represents the US, EU, UN and Russia, said Hamas must be brought into the peace process as isolating Gaza would not work. In an interview in the Times he criticised the Bush administration and Israel for focusing efforts on the West Bank. "It was half of what we needed," he said.

In Gaza, hundreds of Hamas supporters joined a "victory" rally yesterday as a leading Hamas lawmaker appeared in public for the first time since the war's start.

"We thank God when we see our houses bombed and our institutions destroyed, but our people say yes to the resistance and yes to martyrdom for the sake of God," Khalil al-Hayeh said, standing in front of the damaged Palestinian parliament building."We say proudly that Gaza has won the war, the resistance has won the war, and Hamas has won the war."